Curly In Social Studies
by theUglySpirit
Summary: Mr. Garrett, gave me an assignment once to punish me for being insolent or back-talking or something like that. I don't remember doing either; I mostly slept in his class. Rated T for naughty words. One-shot.


SE Hinton owns The Outsiders and the Shepard clan. Jesse is an OC of mine who was meant to be one of Tim's underlings but ended up taking on a life of his own.

**Jesse Byrd, Hero to the Chickasaws**

**By Charles "Curly" Shepard, Jr.**

My Social Studies teacher, Mr. Garrett, gave me an assignment once to punish me for being insolent or back-talking or something like that. I don't remember doing either; I mostly slept in his class.

The assignment was to write a theme on a famous Indian. As soon as he said it, I knew we were going to butt heads. From the few times I was awake for his lectures, I knew Mr. Garrett talked about Indians like they had either all disappeared or had been so run down by the white man until they didn't do much of anything Indian-like anymore. I think he wanted me to study Indians because he thought they would provide me with an example of how people ought to be respectful to their superiors.

Except that I already knew he was wrong on both counts. I knew Indians hadn't all disappeared because I knew an Indian. His name was Jesse and he had started hanging around with Tim and his gang. Tim liked Jesse because he could fight, and everyone else liked him because he was funny as hell. I also knew that the only people Jesse let boss him were his grandma and his older sisters.

Until I met her, I suspected Jesse's grandma must've whipped him to keep him in line. I couldn't imagine letting a woman tell me what to do unless she was wielding some kind of weapon. Tim and me mostly just pretended we were listening to our Ma and then went and did whatever we wanted anyway.

I met Jesse's grandmother a few times while they were all still living in Tulsa. I'm sure now that she never raised a hand to him. She was almost shy with me, but by the way she talked and laughed, I could tell she liked to tease Jesse as much as he liked to raise Cain with everyone else. I never heard her speak English, but she would say something to us as we'd head out the door and whatever it was would make Jesse duck his head and smile all bashful, and then she'd laugh at us. She always made Jesse's sisters feed me whenever I came to their house.

Mr. Garrett suggested I write about Sitting Bull. He said it wouldn't be hard to find books about him in the library, and I certainly spent enough time in the library because that's where they held detention.

I had a hard time keeping focused on those books, though- they all seemed to have the same ideas about Indians as Mr. Garrett. So, I went and asked Jesse.

"Byrdie, what do you know about Sitting Bull?"

He never looked up from the striped 14 he was about to knock into the left corner pocket of Buck's pool table. "Don't know shit about him. He's Sioux. I know that. I ain't a Sioux."

"What the hell are you then?"

The queue ball tapped the 14. It fell into the pocket and disappeared. The goat-roper who was playing Jesse, who had been patiently waiting his turn up to this point, sensed he was doomed and cussed under his breath.

Jesse grinned at me briefly, winked, and zeroed in on the eight ball. "I'm a shark, son," he said and sank the eight ball, too. The other guy paid up whatever he'd bet Jesse and went back out into the bar.

Now that I had Jesse's full attention and I wasn't being a bother to him, I asked again, "What are you?"

"Chickasaw."

"I got to write this theme about Indians, man," I looked around me to see if anyone else might be listening in. I didn't want anyone to know that I was spending my precious time in the bar trying to get my homework done. Truth told, Mr. Garrett had promised to pass me if I just finished this theme. I didn't even have to do a good job. I just had to write 150 words on a piece of paper, and he'd told me two of them were to be "Sitting Bull". I needed 148 more words.

I wanted out of that class something awful because Mr. Garrett was the most boring individual ever to walk the halls of Will Rodgers (and that's saying something if you've ever met my Earth Science teacher, Mr. Thompson), but I wasn't about to relent fully and do it just like he said.

"Are there any famous Chickasaws?" I asked Jesse and immediately knew by the look on his face that he was about to feed me a line.

"Only one and you're looking at him."

"Fucker, come on. I need someone like a war hero or a movie star."

"I'll be a famous Chickasaw someday," Jesse wouldn't drop it. "Write your teacher a theme about me and tell him you had a premonition."

"Goddamnit," I grumbled. Jesse just laughed at me.

"I'm serious, Shepard. Make up a theme about me. My sister did it once at the Boarding School. She made up a Saint and wrote a whole paper on him. Typed it up and everything. Drew his picture. Said he was the Patron Saint of some damned city in France and people prayed to him to keep the Nazis away. Her teacher never looked it up, and she gave Virgie a B minus."

"Why a B minus? How come not an A?"

"What the hell do you care? You shooting for the honor roll now? She gave her a B minus because the school was run by Presbyterians and she said that Catholics was idol worshippers and my sister needed to find a better stock of person to admire."

I frowned at that one. "Catholics ain't idol worshippers. I'm Catholic."

Jesse shrugged. "Don't make a goddamned bit of difference to me. I ain't either one. I'd about kneel down and worship Virginia for out-foxing that teacher, though."

I gave this some thought. He was right. I didn't need an A. I just needed 150 words, and nothing would be better than pulling the wool over on Mr. Garrett.

"Fine," I said to Jesse. "So tell me about your smart-ass self."

Jesse scratched his chin and tried to look studious. "Well, I was born in July of 1950…"

"You're born in July of 1850 now. I got to make you older or he'll know I'm up to something."

"Fine, then. 1850." Here, Jesse stopped to think for a minute. I could tell he was rolling the date around in his head, trying to come up with something plausible. "I was born in 1850. We fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War, so say I joined up when I was 14 and served in the Virginia campaign under General Breckinridge."

I was pretty sure that Oklahoma wasn't yet a state during the Civil War, but Jesse seemed confident that the Chickasaws were Confederate. He seemed so confident, in fact, that I didn't question it and I wasn't the least bit nervous that Mr. Garrett was going to find error in my facts.

So, Jesse Byrd, the famous Chickasaw joined a band of Confederate soldiers who marched into the Blue Ridge Mountains to fight at the Battle of Cold Spring in 1864. The Chickasaws were originally from this area before the Removal, so they knew it well, and Jesse was appointed a scout for Major General Breckinridge despite his young age and limited knowledge of English and reading maps. In the afternoon of July 17, 1864, Jesse was scouting ahead of his regiment when he spotted a small force of Yankees coming across the Shenandoah. He lit back up the ridge into the mountains to warn General Breckinridge who sent sharpshooters to the ridge above the river, and they turned the Yankees back. Unfortunately, Jesse Byrd was caught up in a bear trap, broke his leg and took ill soon after. He died in the Blue Ridge Mountains in the late summer of 1864, and although he never got to see his loving family again, his spirit was at peace because he was buried in his people's traditional homeland. His family received a posthumous commendation in his name from Major General Breckinridge, who credited Jesse with the Confederates winning that battle.

"I don't think he's going to like that last part," I said to Jesse. "Mr. Garrett ain't going to be much interested in your spirit being at peace."

"I'd bet he don't think I even have a spirit, me being a savage and all," Jesse rolled his eyes at his own use of the word 'savage'. "Well, to hell with him anyway. I got as much of a spirit as the next fool. Keep it in there. Maybe your teacher will learn something."

"Yeah, he's going to learn plenty from your made-up tale." I counted through the words of my draft, though, and was pleased to discover it was a little over 200 words.

"Some of it's true, from what my Granny tells me," Jesse said. "One of her uncles got killed in a bear trap in the Blue Ridge Mountains."

"During the Civil War?"

"Nah, when he was a kid, just out wandering around. Sounded good in the story, though, enit? Come on, Shepard, now that I done your homework for you, you got to play me a game."

"I ain't got any money."

"Don't want your money. Just plan to crush your spirit. You can break, though." Jesse began to set the balls back up on the table. I laid my notebook down and went and picked up a pool stick.

Jesse whipped me soundly, as always, but I beat Mr. Garrett at his own game. He gave me a C on my theme and passed me out of that semester of Social Studies. He said my grammar was terrible and my diction too colloquial (whatever the hell that means), but that he was pleased that I seemed to have gone the extra mile to dig up all that information on a lesser-known hero to the Chickasaws.


End file.
